Murder & multiculturalism

Protests in the US highlight majoritarian weakness

At one level, the protests that have erupted in the US over the murder on May 25 of George Floyd, an African-American, by the police in Minneapolis underlines the well-known racial fault lines in the world’s most powerful democracy. The incident, filmed in graphic detail by street cameras and personal mobile phones, captured the institutionalised prejudices against minorities in the US. Viewed on a wider canvas, the manner in which the world’s most powerful person responded to this crisis and the public riposte to it have exposed the limits of imposing narrow majoritarian agendas on multicultural nations. President Donald Trump’s